Platinum Limo Hire Bradford

Sunday, 13 November 2016

Businessman Mohammed Riaz tells court private deal with Chambers Solicitors was like the one Walt Disney used for Florida land

Businessman Mohammed Riaz tells court private deal with Chambers Solicitors was like the one Walt Disney used for Florida land

Businessman Mohammed Riaz tells court private deal with Chambers Solicitors was like the one Walt Disney used for Florida land

A BRADFORD businessman likened himself to Walt Disney in the way he set up a secret deal with a city centre law firm, a court heard.

Mohammed Riaz, who ran a company called Legal Support Services, said he had a private arrangement with Chambers Solicitors to provide interpreters for immigration cases.

He said only himself, his brother Mohammed Ayub, the boss of Chambers, and his daughter, an accounts clerk at Chambers, knew of the deal.

Prosecutors allege LSS was a “sham” company used to defraud the Legal Aid Agency out of nearly £600,000 by dishonestly inflating interpreters’ fees. Riaz, 48, of Southfield Square, Manningham, told a Sheffield Crown Court jury his deal with Chambers followed the “doctrine of undisclosed principals” in law.

“I had seen this on a Sky documentary many years ago,” he said.

court heard Walt Disney apparently used agents acting as his ‘undisclosed principal’ to buy land in Florida for Disney World without declaring his identity, which would have upped the price of the land. Riaz said he adopted this strategy with LSS booking interpreters who believed they were working for Chambers to protect his business against rivals setting up a competing interpreters’ agency.

“Walt Disney was the principal as I was the principal,” he told the court.

“Chambers were working on my behalf. They were working as agents for me.”